Last night, my 26 year-old son, home from a Miami Ad School gig with Crispen Porter Bulgoski told me that he was reviewing the Xbox 360 games I had been playing in my man cave in the basement.  I have to admit, I go in an out of mild addiction to video games.  He proceeded to tell me that I was missing some of the most highly rated games.

Then he asked me if I knew what E3 was.  To which I said of course I do (I didn’t).  Then he proceeded to tell me that Blizzard Activision was coming out with some outstanding games and that EA Sports had totally ruined the NCAA 2K basketball series by coming out with a boring 2K nine version.  He told me that he totally opposed the practice of EA buying up franchises so that other game makers couldn’t improve on the games.

Whoa…too much information about video games.  I thought he was supposed to be learning how to be a great copywriter.  But it did give me inspiration for this post.

My son’s pretty normal.  Or at least as normal as anybody who wants to be an advertising copywriter.  When he’s interested in something he spends time researching about the product and what people are saying about it.  While he looks to opinion leader, when he publishes ratings he becomes an opinion leader.  And when he discovers a great product, he’s more apt to broadcast his opinion.  Likewise, when he gets burned by a bad product, he gets even.

I really don’t know much about EA Sports strategies.  But I do know that they have an image issue with gamers…at least one anyway…that will affect their sales to some extent.

The time Net Geners spend scrutinizing their next purchase should cause all marketers to develop strategies to deal with both positive and negative reviews.  If you don’t join the conversation, your ears will ring with this audience talking behind your back.  That said, if your policies offend them, if your product doesn’t meet their expectations, or if it’s just a product that doesn’t perform, no amount of conversation will change their opinion.